How about them apples?

Wondering where I've been?

Yeah. Me too.

I feel like Angela Bassett trying to get my groove back. It's 12:30 a.m. and I'm sitting on my couch, watching a rerun of Desperate Housewives, wearing Joe's noise canceling headphones, my iPod on shuffle. 

I started several posts and saved them all as drafts. 

I started one about Joe's Grandpa. I started one about Bus Stop Pete. I started one about Bus Stop Pete leaving his empty beer cans in plastic CVS bags on the street corner, prompting a post about bad habits and enablers and how Pete isn't entirely to blame for littering since the city removed his trash can weeks ago.

I tossed around the idea of writing about my love affair with Stephen Colbert.

I started another chapter in my novel. I quit my job as a reporter. I flew home for a long weekend with Joe. I flew back Sunday night. On Monday morning, I started my job as a nanny for seven kids who live in a mansion on the water in St. Pete. 

I watched the latest Coen Brothers film. I learned that my friend Sam and his wife Beth are expecting a baby named Nevin. I saw The Smashing Pumpkins at Ruth Eckerd Hall. I listened to the first presidential debate from my bedroom while writing a story for the paper. I rushed my pug to the vet for what I later learned was E. Coli poisoning. I made an appointment with a therapist and cancelled it one week later. 

I watched my first best friend's little brother tie the knot on Lake Erie Beach. Mesmerized by eight industrial windmills spinning in the distance, I was impressed by Buffalo's push toward alternative energy. 

I sat bleary-eyed at midnight, curled in Joe's lap, through so many episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm I lost track of the funny ones, which is a knock on my mental retention since most episodes are memorable.

I'm no fan of Desperate Housewives, and although I'm watching it right now, it came to my attention five minutes ago that Nicollette Sheridan's character is named Edie and so is the protagonist in my novel. (FYI: My Edie is named after the two-for-one CVS ice cream Joe and I got addicted to when we started dating.)

And yes, Joe is asleep right now.

I've been scatterbrained and distracted lately. Save for writing one chapter in the second-from-the-last seat in a Southwest Airlines flight from Buffalo to Tampa, I've done very little writing. I've been clogged. 

This home-buying thing has turned me into a wordless ghost, paralyzed by momentum. Back when I lived in a tiny cottage without air conditioning, I had a neighbor named Matt Orr who liked to pop in with a bottle of wine every now and then. I remember once, the first time I quit my job as a reporter, he asked if I was sure I was making the right decision.

I had just ended an 8-year relationship with my high school sweetheart. Two weeks into the breakup, I had also quit my job. Why? Because neither one seemed right at the time.

"Oh well. Some people just do it all at once," Matt said, sipping from his merlot. "You're probably just one of those people."

"What kind of people?" I asked.

"The kind that do it all at once."

"Yeah maybe," I said. "I think it's better that way. If it's going to be tough, it might as well be really tough, right?"

And then we toasted to being single and to air conditioning, and how climate control is overrated in the company of good friends. 

(Side note: Last year, around the same time I started back at the newspaper, Matt, a Realtor by trade, launched an events-listing web site. He leases office space under my old office, and without actually seeing his face in the window, I'm sure I walked past him every day on my way to work. It was nice knowing he was there. Even though I had moved some 40 miles away, we were still neighbors in a way, which pleased me. To save gas he now drives a Vepsa knock-off and his new company, this week in sarasota.com is doing really well. So congrats to Matt.)

The first time I left the newspaper, I took a job at a local marble yard. I received an e-mail last week from one of my favorite coworkers. His big sister has embarked on a solo cross-country road trip with her dog, similar in nature and gut instinct to the trip I took last summer, which is always inspiring news. Here's an excerpt from that e-mail:

"So my sister Lori is traveling across country in a piece of shit car with her dog, sleeping in a tent and stopping in all the small towns. Does this sound familiar? I don't know if you remember me ever talking about her. I think I may have mentioned once that you and her would get along great. Anyway, I've attached a couple emails that she has sent so far, I thought you might find them interesting. As I read them I found myself thinking about your trip. I hope everything is going good for you. Keep in touch. I want an autographed copy of your book when it's on the best sellers list."

Joe's sister, Rosey, passed the bar exam last week. We helped her move into her new apartment today, drinking our weight in water, and cruising with the radio off on our ride home because there was so much to talk about, so much to plan and so much to be excited about.

As we exited the highway toward our neighborhood, with its cobblestone streets and hodgepodge roof lines, I noted the comings and goings of people in their yards. For the fuck of it, I made a stupid face, pushing my nose up in the air, curling my lip into Elvis' trademark sneer.

"Would you still love me if I looked like this?" I asked Joe.

"No," he replied. "Because with your sunglasses on I can't see your beautiful eyes."

I used to pride myself on my lightness of being. Infectious zest was my badge of honor. Irritating as it was, being bubbly was kind of my modus operandi, but somewhere along the line that gusto turned to fear and anxiety. I'm working on reverting. I'm working on being less selfish. Less brooding. 

For those of you who are interested in the first chapter of my novel, I'm refraining from posting it here. I'm afraid the opening line is too sexy for my Nana, who reads this blog. 

On second thought, my Nana is a fairly racy bird ...

On third thought, I think I'll keep the rest of Edith Armor's story to myself. Some things are too exciting to share. 

--

PS. Photo by Joe - snapped while picking apples at Stonehill Orchard in North Collins, NY.

The start of a plot.

The coffin was smooth, buttery and brown. When Edie touched it earlier in the parlor, she made a mental note to remember the way the wood felt on her palm, how well it had been sanded. She wondered if it had been sanded by hand or produced in some factory. When I get home, she thought, I'll look it up on the Internet. Coffin production.

And if in fact, her research should suggest that most coffins are produced by factory workers overseas, Edie would insist that night, while lying next to her husband in bed, that if she died before he died, that she should be buried in a hand-sanded coffin.

Likely, he would say, "Edie, baby. Why are you so morose?"

And likely, she would reply, "I don't want you to have to worry about picking one out."

And likely, he would say, "That would be the least of my worries."

And likely, she'd respond, "But if you're standing in the coffin aisle at Home Depot and you have a choice between a coffin made on some assembly line or a coffin painstakingly sanded by a man for days--"

He would interrupt, "You want the one sanded for days?"

And she would reply, "Yes."

No one had recognized her. Not under the umbrella-shaped black hat she bought at a Goodwill store. Not with the black veil shrouding her big, wide unmistakable Edie eyes. Not with the way she slid into the parlor as if to leave no footprint, as if she were just air and space seeping between shoulder blades, rising up among knobby knees in a cold funeral parlor that smelled like a cheap air freshener and damp clothes. Not with the way she pursed her lips and never opened them, not even to breathe the word hello, how are you, or sorry for your loss.

It had been the three little white girls at her side that gave her away. Timid and clinging to their mother's stockings, they were the only little white girls in a sea of black faces, and Edie knew that if she brought them, that no amount of black netting, nor big-brimmed hat would take away from the fact that she was Edith Armor.

Standing under an oak tree, at the top of a wet hill, she hoisted her youngest daughter onto her hip, pushed the child's dark hair away from her eyes and kissed the brown birthmark that was shaped like a bird. Her two youngest daughters, blonde twins in black tap shoes, grabbed each others hands and stared at their feet.

It was the first time Edie had been to a funeral in the rain, and other than that one extraordinary detail, there was nothing else extraordinary about the day.

--

PS. Illustration is Reincarnation by Hisss.

Plot eureka

Ran into another guardian bum-angel yesterday. I didn't take his picture for fear that it would reveal he didn't exist.

FYI: it was not the same street prophet who predicted last month that our final offer on the house would be accepted. This guy was wearing a gray T-shirt that read: "I lost my #. Can I have yours?"

I was taking pictures of these fine ladies at the corner of 2nd Street and First Avenue (outside of Ivanka Ska's House of Ska) when this bum-angel said, "You should go across the street and see if the photographer over there needs your help."

I looked across the street, saw nothing, and snorted, "What photographer?" 

"There's a photo shoot at the post office. The models are wearing the same kind of getup as the mannequins. If I were you, I'd go see if the photographer could use a hand. You never know."

Because bums are northern stars, I sighed, pedaled across the street and watched as two statuesque (albeit extra terrestrial-looking) models pouted for a short blonde photographer who looked not unlike myself.

Intimidated by these specimens and feeling pretty weird about approaching the photographer, I pedaled back to the House of Ska and told my guardian bum-angel that I felt uncomfortable interrupting the shoot.

"Hey, you know never," he said. "She might not need your help now, but in the future say she's got a job that requires an extra set of hands, she'll remember you."

"I don't have any business cards," I replied.

"So," he said, challenging me. "What you do is you come back to the store here - I presume she works for the owner - and you leave your card and say, 'I saw you had a photographer out here Saturday. If you ever need help, or she's not available, call me.'"

Thanking the guy for his two-cents, I pedaled home and considered the idea. 

Later that night, while walking to CVS to get the usual chocolate ice cream, ketchup and charcoal, I had an epiphany. A plot epiphany.  It hit me when I passed a woman in hospital scrubs who, after rushing to get off the bus at 4th Street and 8th Avenue, asked me for directions to a house by the bay.

The plot epiphany was so powerful that it instantly made my stomach hurt. Scurrying home with my bag of ice cream, ketchup and charcoal, plot poured from my mouth like frothy Pop Rocks. 

It is the first plot idea I've ever had. 

With Joe's help, I ironed out some details, hammered out a synopsis and lovingly named my protagonist. 

Anyway, what I'm getting it is ...

I'm leaving my regular post at the newspaper. I put in my unofficial two-week notice last week. Instead I'll work as a freelancer, which will allow more time to write for myself and supplement the income I'll make as a nanny.

A nanny you say?

Yes. In two weeks I start watching seven kids in St. Pete.

Seven kids you say?

Yes. One family. Seven kids.

11 people I've interviewed in Sarasota

Divine guidance can be found in a reporters notebook.

...

"No one ever wanted to ride with us in the winter because we only had two blankets. And in the summer, when temperatures reached 95 degrees, we choked from the heat because the car didn't have air conditioning."

- Roberta Tengerdy, with husband Tom, on the 1967 Volkswagon Beetle she bought her sophomore year at Colorado State University, the same year she met Tom. 

"You're lost if you don't believe in it. It's something you don't exactly feel. You just know it's there. You know that when you die, times going on forever. It's not the end. It's the beginning."

- 100-year-old Mildred Bessie Barton Hill on heaven. 

"That's a good question. If the cheese were square it'd stick out the side of the sub."

- Subway superstar Jared Fogle on why the sandwich franchise that made him famous cuts its cheese into triangles.

"He needs his shade. He's a very spoiled bird." 

- Johnny Malone on why he sits under the awning at Whole Foods with his cockatiel, Bobby.

"Everything has changed but everything has stayed exactly the same. Often people will say to me, 'why do you still have Cathy on a diet?' And I say, look at the headlines. It's an endless turf out there. While it's redundant in a way, these are the things we keep wrestling with - our relationships with food, our relationships with the opposite sex, our relationships with our mothers, our relationships with the clutter on our desks. The things we face each day are what I love writing about and women have this fabulous capacity to keep having hope even if there's no hope to be had."

- Cartoonist Cathy Guisewite on why she's refrained from changing "Cathy," to conform to 2008 post-feminist ideals. (The comic strip, which debuted in 1976, began as a series of sarcastic sketches Guisewite would mail her mother ripping on her pathetic mid-20s love life.)

"I'll tell you one thing. He changed. I think he saw a lot of things too young for his lifetime. He came back a  man and I never thought I'd say that. He's a little more guarded and careful now. He's quiet now."

- In 2004 Sherri Vroom's then 20-year-old son, John, served eight months in Iraq. Two years later he was deployed again.

"Well, she has beautiful hair. She has a beautiful face and beautiful eyes."

- Seven-year-old Caitlyn Gutierrez on why her mother is beautiful.

"I'm gonna de-bone them first. That way I'm not sitting on one wing for too long."

- Gilberto Noriega on how he planned to win the Munchies Fire-In-Your-Hole wing eating challenge. (He lost.)

"I look at the bus as a research and exploration vessel. It functions as an idea and information hub. We're researching, exploring and recording our findings."

- Roth Conrad on why he and friend Bob Downes (right) bought their old high school bus, converted it to run on vegetable oil and drove it across the country. See link.)

"I'm an outgoing person. I like to be the funny guy. I want people to notice me. If I had any other role, I wouldn't have been as funny as I was."

- Baseball catcher Connor Davis, 13, on how he knew he owned his middle school production of The Wizard of Oz when his drama teacher cast him as The Cowardly Lion. (His dream role: Dracula.)

"What I told the jury at the onset was that I was going to ask the questions that needed to be asked ... because if not me than who?"

- Assistant Public Defender Adam Tebrugge on how he handled the pressure of defending Joseph P. Smith, the man sentenced to death for the 2004 murder of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia. 

--

PS. Cathy Guisewite photo courtesy of People Magazine. All other photos are mine.

Granny panties rejoice. The thong is out.

I noticed that in the alley outside of our apartment, some woman with a small ass lost two thongs. If the butt floss belongs to anyone you know, please tell them this is no way to amputate a whale tail.

PS. Happy Birthday to a woman who has always rocked timeless bloomers. My mom! (She turns 48 today.)